Website marketing and development
The following list identifies the types of actions needed to be taken, to successfully promote your company on-line. Many companies need to export, which means being found by potential customers in other countries with different methods of seeking a supplier.
Company Blog:
A company Blog is a vital part of presenting your company to the world. Often misused. The purpose of a company Blog is to present regular information about the company, products and services, but only using a limited amount of text and images, the rest of the information is held on the main website.
Blogs which are updated often, are indexed more frequently by search engines. The main purpose of Blogging is communicate with individuals, interested in what you have to say, private or business. This can used to feed the visitor or customer to your main website. Most companies do not bother with this important function at least twice a week.The two most popular methods of creating a Blog, is to use the free service of www.blogger.com or create and maintain a Blog running on your website. This should be Linux based and demands more effort and resources.
Websites:
A simple website is easy to create from a template and many thousands of companies and individuals offer a web design service. Unless you have agreed a maintenance or support contract with the designers, you are on your own when the site is up and running. Many companies want and need a website that suits their existing company branding, and then add a range of additional company/customer benefits.
Examples would be, an integrated shopping cart that takes credit card and PayPal payments. A ticket system based on a database that tracks customer problems or enquiries. Forms, surveys, newsletters, creating and maintaining the different types of sitemaps for search engine use, FAQ's etc. etc.
Forums:
I am a member of a number of different Forums, which are very useful for asking questions, getting support and also for promotion. Each Forum has it's own method of managing members. It is important that you help and support other members, and not just use it for promoting your own company.
You can create and manage a Forum from your own website. This provides valuable information on customers, their needs and requirements. Members of the Forum often provide an answer to a posted question, which helps the company understand how products and services are being viewed.Videos and YouTube:
Using a video to enhance a customers knowledge about your company is a very popular method to increase Internet visibility. Yes, they can be very professional and very expensive and are normally created by specialised companies. A video can also be created from a collection of still images and text, with sound, I have some experience of this work. Google owns YouTube, and if the Title, Description and Keywords of the video are done correctly, the benefits of higher video ranking are more viewers, which means more visibility for your company
Sitemaps:
Creating and maintaining the various types of sitemaps is a vital part of the company webmaster. A sitemap for Google, and Yahoo are different, you need a sitemap for videos if hosted on your site. For more information on this subject, please visit a page I created on Squidoo called Sitemaps, or see the detailed information and example on website sitemaps on the website. There are 12 different types, all important.
RSS and Newsfeeds:
RSS or Real simple syndication is a very popular method to stream information to Internet users. Here is my simple guide at RSS feed
Alerts:
Creating an Alert of a keyword, or company name, is a simple method to see how, or if your company is talked about on the Internet. See if you have positive or negative comments on other websites, Forums or Blogs. It's free and has many benefits.
Forms and Surveys:
A vital part of any website is a form for the visitor and potential customer make contact. The form should be easy to use and designed to prevent spammers from harvesting your contact details. Surveys are a version of a form. Try the Drachsi survey
Newsletters:
A company Newsletter that people can subscribe to, is consider a vital "Must Have" facility for many websites. Maybe you already subscribe to a Newsletter, like those produced weekly by Aldi & Lidl, you can see how effective they are at getting your attention.
PR, Public Relations:
PR is another area that for the smaller business, does not get enough effort. By joining Groups, Forums, posting to Blogs and contacting specific internet resources, your information can be dispersed over a wide number of sources.
PDF Files:
Turning a document into a PDF file, add Titles, Descriptions and Keywords, is another method to promote the company branding. . A pdf file can contain text, images, video, interactive forms and are often downloaded as a source of company information.
Using free services:
Squidoo:
One of
the great assets. Here is a selection of the many pages (on Squidoo,
called lenses) I have created. If you have never heard of Squidoo, I have created a
step by step guide to get you started
How to start with Squidoo
1. Creating
virtual flyer's (handbills) is a simple but very effective method to
gain market share and increase the Page Ranking of you main website,
here is my
virtual flyer guide.
2. Creating and using a Blog to spread the message you wish to make
is very normal and there is a lot of information available. I have
created a simple guide to starting and maintain your very own
Blog
3. Everybody lives local. Now the major search facilities are
providing more and more searches, based on your local place in the
world. Most people prefer to purchase from companies and business
near to them. Why not create your very own LAW, (Local Area Web) as
part of your website to encourage people to purchase from your local
suppliers. Good for you and good for them. Here is a
LAW Guide
which would work well for towns and cities in the UK.
BT Tradespace:
An excellent web presence creation tool. Only for UK customers. This is another area where I can provide help and support.
Google Analytics:
It is vital to understand the number of visitors to your website or Blog. The best free method is to sign on for a Google account, verify and then add the supplied code to every page on your website. This provides a wide range of important information, which pages and products are the most popular, which country do visitors come from, and lots of other information to help understand the success or failure of the site.
Google Places and Maps:
A recent addition to the range of Webmaster services is the opportunity to provide company details and location of your company address, this helps with higher page ranking. An often over looked resource. Very important to localise your content.
Search Engine Optimisation:
Everybody providing SEO services, claims to get your website into the top page ranking area. Nobody can do this. If you are listed in Wikipedia, this is one of the best links you can achieve. What can be done is use all of the above sections and the enhance key pages. The important sections are Title, description and keywords. The keywords should be in the text. Images should have description text, and many other ways to make the page highly rated.
Using a web resource like AnooX
You may have heard of Anoox, a new type of search
engine to which you have direct input. 
worth considering if you plan to build up you online resources.
Webmaster Services:
As you can see from the above information, there are a lot of things that should be done. A wide range of knowledge, practical experience, the ability to work with existing websites and design staff make the Company Support Services from Drachsi an import resource you should consider using.
Validate your web pages:
An important part of any website is to make certain all your pages conform to the W3C standards. To check any of your pages, please follow this link W3C, it's free and you may be surprised.